Juan Aguacate wrote:especially that pandering garbage that is the Puyo Puyo boss fight. They should just be embarrassed for putting that in the game.

WTF? How was that part not amazing? It's not even hard compared to the real game.

I also don't understand why the game can't save between acts. I never was a fan of Sonic CD so I wasn't happy that they carried over the special stages from that game here for the Chaos Emeralds. Those stages are garbage, absolute garbage.

Look up Sonic CD's special stages again... these are not the same thing.

I think Generations is a better game too, just don't play it on PSNow. It runs terribly on that service

Generations is so overrated. Levels are littered with death pits and that's just bad level design. Half the game is still taken up by this other character with long blue giraffe sized legs and a 3D perspective, I'm not sure who or what this character is but he sucks. Story/voice acting is all bad. The backgrounds and art direction is ridiculously busy and bad, I can't really picture any level in my mind at all. Bosses sucked and took 10x longer than any boss in Mania to beat. I think some fans were just desperate. To say this is better than Mania (which is straight up Genesis Sonic) even as an S&K fan like yourself seems bonkers to me. The lock on homing attack in modern Sonic games is terrible too. Feels amazing to see that thrown out in Mania because it was never good, thank goodness.

Highly disagree with everything you just said there.

Mania feels like a bunch of no talent hacks trying really hard to outdo the big boys. Sonic in 2D was perfected on the Genesis and no one is ever going to outdo those games.

Maybe I'm irrational, but I like Snake's Revenge a lot. I don't care what kind of crap people give it. Just because Kojima wasn't involved doesn't automatically mean it sucks, and that's the case here. There are certainly some frustrations (many of which are also present in the first game), but that doesn't drag it down too far. Soldier vision has gotten really bad since the first game, though, they pretty much only see in tunnels.

Anyway, it ain't perfect, but if you haven't even tried it because of its reputation, don't let that stop you. You may still hate it, but who knows, you might find it enjoyable.

I finally beat Breath of the Wild, after having the game since launch. It is an amazing game and was well worth the 70 hours I've put into it. It is a great swan song for the WiiU, a system I really enjoy collecting for and playing. It ate up practically all of my gaming free time for months.

I have some gripes with the game, but they are fairly minor. Much like almost everyone else, I found that the weapons breaking was a bit out of hand. I'm ok with my tree branches or clubs are breaking after a fight or two, but once I'm finding actual swords I would expect they'd have some durability. Also I found it quite frustrating that the game made no use of the gamepad. I'm sure it was a business decision to mitigate any possibility of hurting switch sales, but the inventory management was far more effort than it needed to be.

Every time I turned on this game I found something new to explore. The graphics are pleasant, with a style that should age well. I was frequently impressed by the wide range of choices you had in handling almost any task or battle. Link's powers are fun to play with, the world is vast and varied and everything comes together so well that every session of play is rewarding.

This is also the first 3D Zelda I've beaten, and it rivals Link to the Past for just how much enjoyment I got out of it. A must play if you have either system it appears on.

Here's a game I never expected to see exist - a Mario x Rabbids crossover game. It's also the only game that made me seriously question whether or not I was going to buy a Mario game. In the end, however, I decided my loathing of Rabbids was overpowered by my love of Mario, and I'm extremely glad that I fell on that side of the debate. I HATE Rabbids. Like, I hate everything about them. I hate the way they look. I hate they way they sound. I hate that their whole gimmick is to be the most annoying things on the planet. I hate them. I love Mario, though, and I love just about any Nintendo console exclusive. Thankfully, the game isn't as bad as it sounds. Just about everything about this game's appearance is deceptive at first - the stupid look of it, kiddy visuals, the notion of a game by Ubisoft that actually gets finished before it ships.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a turn based tactics game à la XCOM. While it's definitely not fair to say "It's just like XCOM!" it wouldn't be inaccurate to call it "XCOM Lite." For those of you who have played Civilizations Revolution, comparing that game to Civilization V is a lot like comparing this game to XCOM in terms of general scope. The gameplay and tactical choices are a lot narrower than in XCOM, the experience doesn't feel as grandiose, and the general presentation feels smaller scale, but the core of the game is the same. If you've played XCOM, then imagine that but smaller, simpler, and with Mario characters and Rabbids. The Rabbids are still insufferably annoying, but at least they're not as bad as they are in their own games for the most part.

If you've played Mario games before (and if you haven't, you've wasted your life up until now), you probably know that narrative isn't really a big factor there. For those interested, however, some science happens and Rabbids appear in this science-y chick's basement, and then some more science stuff happens, and the Rabbids get science-d away to the Mushroom Kingdom, and because Rabbids suck, the Mushroom Kingdom turns to shit, and then Mario is all "Dang, they messed up the kingdom. Guess I gotta do everything to fix it again" cause Peach is being her usual useless self, but then these Rabbids that are dressed like Luigi and Peach show up, and Mario's like "Cool, got myself a squad." So they're going along, shooting Rabbids in atypical totally-not-normal-Mario style, but then Peach is like "Psych, yo, I'm not useless in this game. Go go gadget shotgun!" and start blowing dudes' heads off (okay, so they turn into family-friendly blue science stuff) and being a general BAMF. Then Bowser Jr. is being a little shit like normal so you have to go beat the crap out of him and save the world. Or something like that. The story doesn't really make sense, but I'm pretty sure my version is better than the actual story.

So, stupid story aside (but really, I didn't expect anything different), Ubisoft actually got a LOT right with this game. It's not perfect - it was still developed by Ubisoft, after all - but it's REALLY good. The sound design, especially, stands out as stellar. The World 3 boss battle, in particular, was just stellar with regards to music. Even the overworld and results screen music, though, is extremely well done. Some of the game's soundtrack is original, but some of it - the most impressive parts, in my opinion - are arrangements of classic Mario tunes that long-time fans of the franchise will recognize right away. The visual design is great, too, with the Rabbids' costumes blending their stupid faces with Mario series character designs extremely well; the characters look true to their Mario counterparts while remaining distinctively Rabbid. For the most part, the environments and cut scenes look great, too, although there are certain instances - particularly some of the lava falls in World 4 - where you can see that the textures could have used a little bit more work.

Honestly, my only real gripes with the game are some performance issues and some somewhat uneven difficulty spikes. There were multiple instances throughout the game where the whole thing would freeze or hiccup for a second or two, sometimes during battle, sometimes on the overworld, and sometimes in a cut scene. It would always fix itself after a couple seconds and keep right on going like nothing ever happened, but it seemed far more prevalent in the latter half of the game. All in all, it felt like a little more testing and optimization could have been done, but as far as Ubisoft products go at launch, this is basically platinum tier. With regards to the difficult spikes, they generally weren't too bad, but going from World 2 to World 3 was a marked increase in difficulty, and about a quarter of the way through World 4, things got downright tough. 4-8 and the final boss in 4-9 were absolutely brutal, and I feel zero shame in admitting that I had to use the "Easy Mode" option for those last two fights. This is what I meant earlier when I said that the kiddy visuals are deceptive; I am absolutely confident that very, VERY few kids will be finishing this game on their own. It looks like it's for little kids, but the end of this game is worthy of any hardcore gamer.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was an unlikely game that I expected to find disappointing but ended up absolutely loving. Beneath the childlike and frankly stupid exterior (thanks to the damn Rabbids) lies a legitimate strategy game that is generally approachable but bears its teeth in full towards the end. There are a few minor performance issues as one should expect from Ubisoft, but the game looks good, sounds great, and plays beautifully. With challenges and scores awarded based on one's performance in each mission, there's a good bit of replay value there, and with story DLC - both solo and co-op - coming in the future, this is a game to which I'm sure I'll be returning.

I beat Metal Arms: Glitch in the System on the Microsoft XBOX this evening!

Metal Arms is a rather underrated gem for this console generation. I think I heard about it through XPlay, but that might have been it. It was a game released with little publicity and got drowned out by other games. However, much later, I was able to pick it up rather cheaply and try the game for myself.

The best part of the game is the voice cast. The voice talent for the game is highly impressive. Names such as Dan Castellaneta, Rob Paulson, Patrick Warburton & Dave Wittenberg all lend their talents to this little known game. And they all do a wonderful job as the writing is snappy and the voice actors really had fun in the game.

The gameplay is a mixture of Ratchet & Clank and Halo. It's a 3rd person run and gun game with a variety of weapons like in Ratchet & Clank, though all of them are fairly standard with Shotguns, Machine Guns and Rocket Launchers. The game feels and controls very much like a Halo game with dual stick driving, controls, mid level check points and even some team management.

The real joy in the action comes in blowing up your enemies. Even towards the end, blowing up little robots and watching their shrapnel go everywhere is just a damn fun time. Hearing their screams and dialogue makes it even more worthwhile.

Killing them is the fun part. However, all of the robots take way too long to kill. You run out of ammo out of your favorite gun way too quickly, which I would assume necessitate gun swapping. But, when there are hordes of enemies in one area and they all take a while to kill, it gets a bit daunting. Also, add in over 40 levels and the game seems padded.

Also, the levels never really stand out. I understand that you are in a world inhabited by robots, but there is no color whatsoever and the level design seems rudimentary.

Overall, the game is not bad, but it's not the greatest game in the world. I can see how it was buried when it first came out by larger names. Besides robots shooting each other, there is nothing too exciting about the game. But, for $10 on all three consoles, I would say the game is worth that price. It's fun and enjoyable if a little bland.

Also, the developers had an interesting story. They were former Midway developers who worked on Hydro Thunder. This was their first new property as a stand alone developer. After the game's released, they were soon eaten up and now work for Blizzard!

"Sorry Mega Man, but it looks like you might be stuck up there for a little while longer..." - Data

17 years later and counting.

I had so much fun playing Mega Man Legends that I wanted more. The weird thing about 2 is that I owned it (and it's sadly probably the rarest game I somehow misplaced and lost at some point). Yet I didn't really remember anything about the game up to this point except the beginning snowy town and the final boss fight. My only theory is that I got it in 2000 when it was brand new, played it then, and forgot about it all until now somehow! I'm not sure why it didn't leave an impression, but I had a blast playing through it now and kind of see this as my first run haha...

There are some quality of life improvements over the first game with some of the mechanics. Controls are a little better with locking on (when it works) and strafing now. More equippable stuff. Being able to explore the Flutter is amazing and one of the best home base airships I've seen in awhile. The music is much better and the distinguished elemental themed temples were really neat.

But ultimately... I think I might like the first game more overall. 2 bites off a lot and a bit more than it could chew. The campy story is showing some age with some dreadful voice overs (the alien chick), the bosses were more complex as were the arenas but the lock on was a bit of a pain at times. In looking up some youtube stuff, there is almost a whopping 2 hours of cutscenes in Legends 2 which was kind of crazy. There are a lot of areas, yet it's still a fairly straightforward and linear game. But because it's a bit discombobulated, I don't think these towns and locations will be nearly as memorable as the island in Legends 1. I like how the first game was a bit more of a Metroidvania thing going on too with the large interconnected ruins. Tron Bonne was actually kind of lame in 2 as well, she was buckling at her knees and suddenly a nervous wreck around Mega Man... which is cute, but she was this haughty arrogant mechanic in the first game and awesome. Also, there is absolutely nothing good to say about these duck pirates in 2... all the time they took up should have been just more Bonne development. So yeah, I like how 2 was bigger in scope, but did we really need to bring in aliens and start going to space? Legend 1's innocence kind of wins out for me. Ultimately though, I loved both and this was a blast to play them back to back. The charm is amazing and the visuals hold up extremely well for PSX games, there were so many little intricate details in the world. Examining items and things in every little town room was a blast, since there was usually some dialogue to everything you looked at. And the NPC's being dynamic between the story events made it all feel alive and active. Lots of cool stuff. I think 2 would have faired a little better if they pushed it to the PS2 and refined the controls a little. It's a shame that one got shafted a bit, then we never got the sequel, when things like Mega Man X7 and X8 exist... yikes.

Finally played through this game with Elkinfencer using the online co-op. It is surprisingly good! Contemporary fantasy arcade beam em ups like Magician Lord or The Golden Axe games generally bore me as the tool box the players are given usually only contains two things: good timing and as many tokens as you can put in.

In Tower of Doom, the combination of being able to level up your character, shop in stores, and use a variety of spells or items actually gives you a pretty strong chance of making it far in the game. The WiiU version allowed us to 'earn' credits as we played through so although we did have to token feed a little bit, it was always within the confines of what the game provided on normal difficulty.

Absolutely the best part: Choosing the fight the immortal red dragon towards the end of the game. I have never had a game, let alone an arcade game stop me 3 times in a row to question my judgement.

Elkin: I basically agree with your assessment, and yet seem to have a different take in the end. That is, I do think it's XCOM-lite; I do think that it's simplified, yet also has some insane difficulty spikes; I do think it's cute/fun/etc... but I feel like I have no interest in revisiting it once it's over. It doesn't give me the same feeling as XCOM where there's this amazing drama that comes from it that makes it almost infinitely replayable. Heck, I don't even want to go back to earlier battles to grind for gold even. I don't know. I think it's a pretty fine little strategy game, and quite fun. But there's just too much that doesn't really hit the mark for me - the way that all shots are like 0%, 50%, 75%, 100% and that's it; the party being limited to just three characters; etc. I feel like this was a totally successful experiment - one that shouldn't have worked so well. And yet, it's still not really doing it for me. The best way I can put it is that when I'm playing this game - and having fun - I'm still thinking to myself "man, XCOM on Switch would be amazing." Like, I'm enjoying the game but totally wishing I was playing XCOM instead.